India is home to the globe’s second-largest road network, spanning nearly 4 million miles, and has over a thousand tollbooths, most of them run manually.
Traditional booths like these, wherever in the world they’re deployed, can contribute to massive traffic delays, long commute times and serious road congestion.
To help automate tollbooths across India, Calsoft, an Indian-American technology company, helped implement a broad range of NVIDIA technologies integrated with the country’s dominant payment system, known as the unified payments interface, or UPI, for a client.
Manual tollbooths demand more time and labor compared to automated ones. However, automating India’s toll systems faces an extra complication: the diverse range of license plates.
India’s non-standardized plates pose a significant challenge to the accuracy of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) systems. Any implementation would need to address these plate variations, which include divergent color, sizing, font styles and placement upon vehicles, as well as many different languages.
The solution Calsoft helped build automatically reads passing vehicle plates and charges the associated driver’s UPI account. This approach reduces the need for manual toll collection and is a massive step toward addressing traffic in the region.
Automation in Action
As part of a pilot program, this solution has been deployed in several leading metropolitan cities. The solution provides about 95% accuracy in its ability to read plates through the use of an ANPR pipeline that detects and classifies the plates as they roll through tollbooths.
NVIDIA’s technology has been crucial in this effort, according to Vipin Shankar, senior vice president of technology at Calsoft. “Particularly challenging was night-time detection,” he said. “Another challenge was model accuracy improvement on pixel distortions due to environmental impacts like fog, heavy rains, reflections due to bright sunshine, dusty winds and more.”
The solution uses NVIDIA Metropolis to track and detect vehicles throughout the process. Metropolis is an application framework, a set of developer tools and a partner ecosystem that brings visual data and AI together to improve operational efficiency and safety across a range of industries.
Calsoft engineers used NVIDIA Triton Inference Server software to deploy and manage their AI models. The team also used the NVIDIA DeepStream software development kit to build a real-time streaming platform. This was key for processing and analyzing data streams efficiently, incorporating advanced capabilities such as real-time object detection and classification.
Calsoft uses NVIDIA hardware, including NVIDIA Jetson edge AI modules and NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs in its AI solutions. Calsoft’s tollbooth solution is also scalable, meaning it’s designed to accommodate future growth and expansion needs, and can better ensure sustained performance and adaptability as traffic conditions evolve.
At Gamescom, the world’s biggest gaming expo, NVIDIA has once again pushed the boundaries of gaming technology to ensure that gamers have incredibly immersive experiences and can enjoy enhanced performance and visual fidelity.
The company’s announcements today include its first digital human technologies on-device small language model showcased in the first game tech demo, Mecha BREAK, a milestone celebration of 600 RTX games and applications with 20 new RTX games announced, and new games on GeForce NOW.
Alongside these, NVIDIA announced a collaboration with MediaTek that brings G-SYNC display technologies to more gamers.
Gamescom, held every year in Cologne, Germany, is where innovators from across the gaming community showcase their latest creations. In 2018, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang introduced NVIDIA RTX at the event, bringing real-time ray tracing and AI to gaming and setting a new standard for graphics performance.
NVIDIA ACE: Advancing AI-Powered Game Characters
Leading NVIDIA’s announcements at Gamescom was NVIDIA ACE, a revolutionary suite of technologies for bringing digital humans to life with generative AI.
The ACE suite also expanded with NVIDIA’s first digital human technologies on-device small language model (SLM), NVIDIA Nemotron-4 4B Instruct, improving conversation for game characters. This new on-device model provides better role-play, retrieval-augmented generation and function-calling capabilities, allowing game characters to more intuitively comprehend player instructions, respond to gamers and perform more accurate and relevant actions.
Perfect World Games is advancing its ACE and digital human tech demo, Legends, with new AI-powered vision capabilities, unlocking a new level of immersion and accessibility for PC games.
Celebrating 600 RTX Games and Apps With 20 New RTX Titles
NVIDIA RTX continues to revolutionize the ways people play and create with ray tracing, DLSS and AI-powered technologies. Today marks another RTX milestone: 600 RTX-enhanced games and applications are now available.
This week, NVIDIA announced 20 new RTX and DLSS titles to join this impressive roster, including high-profile games such as Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Dune: Awakening and Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
Game Science’s much-anticipated Black Myth: Wukong also launches today, featuring full ray tracing and DLSS 3, delivering the ultimate RTX experience for GeForce RTX 40 Series gamers.
Half-Life 2: An RTX Remix Project Unveils Remastered Nova Prospekt
Half-Life 2 RTX: An RTX Remix Project from Orbifold Studios is a community remaster of Valve’s classic game. Now boasting over 100 contributing artists, Orbifold Studios unveiled a remaster of one of Half-Life 2’s most iconic levels, Nova Prospekt.
Using NVIDIA RTX Remix, Orbifold Studios has remastered Nova Prospekt with full ray tracing, DLSS 3.5 with Ray Reconstruction and Reflex. The Nova Prospekt trailer also reveals remasters of Gordon’s revolver, shotgun and Overwatch Standard Issue Pulse Rifle, remasters of the Combine soldiers and Antlions, and the addition of new geometry and detail that uses the capabilities of modern PCs to increase realism.
The companies’ collaboration integrates the full suite of NVIDIA G-SYNC technologies to the world’s most popular scalers, allowing for the creation of feature-rich G-SYNC monitors at a more affordable price.
A highlight of this collaboration is the introduction of G-SYNC Pulsar, a new technology that offers 4x the effective motion clarity alongside a smooth and tear-free variable refresh rate (VRR) experience. G-SYNC Pulsar will debut on newly announced monitors, including the ASUS ROG Swift 360Hz PG27AQNR, Acer Predator XB273U F5 and AOC AGON PRO AG276QSG2.
GeForce NOW Raises the Bar for Cloud Gaming
Each week geforcenow.com adds top-tier PC games on GFN Thursday to stream at peak performance from GeForce RTX SuperPODs in the cloud, along with new features and updates for members.
For Gamescom, GeForce NOW is adding the highly anticipated action role-playing game Black Myth: Wukong from Game Science, as well as a demo for the upcoming PC release of FINAL FANTASY XVI from Square Enix. A new update brings Xbox automatic sign-in, making it easy for members to quickly jump into their PC games across devices by linking their account just once.
These latest GeForce NOW updates — available today — raise the bar for cloud gaming and build on recent milestones, including added support for mods, new data centers in Japan and Poland, and 2,000 games available in the cloud. Check out GeForce NOW’s Gamescom blog for more details.
Star Wars Outlaws: GeForce RTX 40 Series Bundle
In collaboration with Ubisoft, Massive Entertainment and Lucasfilm Games, NVIDIA is launching a new Star Wars Outlaws GeForce RTX 40 Series Bundle. Gamers will experience the first-ever open-world Star Wars game, set between the events of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, enhanced with NVIDIA DLSS 3.5, ray tracing and Reflex technologies. It’ll also be available in the cloud on GeForce NOW.
For all the news and details on NVIDIA’s latest Gamescom announcements, visit GeForce News.
Each week, GeForce NOW elevates cloud gaming by bringing top PC games and new updates to the cloud.
Starting today, members can stream the highly anticipated action role-playing game (RPG) Black Myth: Wukong from Game Science, as well as a demo for the upcoming PC release of FINAL FANTASY XVI from Square Enix.
Experience these triple-A releases now — at peak performance, even on low-powered devices — along with Xbox automatic sign-in coming Aug. 22 on GFN Thursday. The feature will make it easy for members to dive into their favorite PC games.
These latest GeForce NOW updates — announced today at the annual Gamescom conference — build on recent milestones, including added support for mods, new data centers in Japan and Poland, and 2,000 games available in the cloud.
Get Your Game Face On
GeForce NOW recently celebrated 2,000 games in the cloud, thanks to strong collaborations with publishers that have brought their titles to the platform.
New games are added weekly from popular digital gaming stores Steam, Epic Games Store, Ubisoft Connect, Battle.net, and Xbox, including over 140 PC Game Pass titles. Powered by up to GeForce RTX GPU-class graphics, GeForce NOW is bringing even more top titles from celebrated publishers to the cloud.
No monkey business in the cloud — just high-performance gameplay.
Members can be among the first to play Black Myth: Wukong without waiting for downloads or worrying about system requirements.
Take on the role of Sun Wukong the Monkey King, wielding the powers of a magical staff throughout a richly woven narrative filled with mythical creatures and formidable foes. Learn to harness Wukong’s unique abilities and combat styles, reminiscent of the Soulslike game genre. As the “Destined One,” take on various challenges to uncover the truth hidden beneath the veil of a glorious historical legend.
Witness the beauty of ancient China — from snow-draped mountains to intricate cave networks — in exquisite detail elevated by NVIDIA RTX technologies, including full ray tracing and DLSS 3. The GeForce NOW Ultimate membership brings this visual splendor to life at 4K resolution and 120 frames per second, even on underpowered devices, streaming from GeForce RTX 4080 SuperPODs in the cloud.
Questing looks so good in the cloud.
The latest mainline numbered entry in the renowned RPG series from Square Enix, FINAL FANTASY XVI is coming soon to the cloud. Get a taste of the title’s high-octane action, breathtaking world and epic storytelling in its PC demo on GeForce NOW. Members can learn to master their Eikonic abilities while battling colossal foes and exploring the stunning realm of Valisthea.
Try the demo on GeForce NOW to jump right into an epic adventure without worrying about system specs.
GeForce NOW members can play these titles and more at high performance. Ultimate members can stream at up to 4K resolution and 120 fps with support for NVIDIA DLSS and NVIDIA Reflex technology, and experience the action even on low-powered devices. Keep an eye out on GFN Thursdays for the latest on game release dates in the cloud.
Set It and Forget It
Link-credible.
GeForce NOW makes gaming more convenient by letting members link their gaming accounts directly to the cloud service. Starting Aug. 22, such support extends to Xbox accounts — alongside existing support for Epic Games and Ubisoft automatic sign-in — enabling seamless access across devices.
After linking their Xbox profiles just once, members will be signed in automatically across their devices for all future GeForce NOW sessions — speeding access to their favorite PC games, from Fallout 76 to Starfield to Forza Horizon 5.
This new feature joins Xbox game library sync on GeForce NOW, which allows members to sync their supported Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft Store games to their cloud streaming library. Members will enjoy a more unified gaming experience with the ability to instantly play over 140 Xbox Game Pass titles across devices.
With a steady drumbeat of quality games from top publishers and new features to continuously improve the service, GeForce NOW is a gamer’s gateway to high-performance gaming from the cloud, enabling play on any device with real-time ray tracing and high resolutions. Check back every GFN Thursday for more news on upcoming game launches, new game releases, service updates and more.
NVIDIA’s first digital human technology small language model is being demonstrated in Mecha BREAK, a new multiplayer mech game developed by Amazing Seasun Games, to bring its characters to life and provide a more dynamic and immersive gameplay experience on GeForce RTX AI PCs.
The new on-device model, called Nemotron-4 4B Instruct, improves the conversation abilities of game characters, allowing them to more intuitively comprehend players and respond naturally.
NVIDIA has optimized ACE technology to run directly on GeForce RTX AI PCs and laptops. This greatly improves developers’ ability to deploy state-of-the-art digital human technology in next-generation games such as Mecha BREAK.
A Small Language Model Purpose-Built for Role-Playing
NVIDIA Nemotron-4 4B Instruct provides better role-play, retrieval-augmented generation and function-calling capabilities, allowing game characters to more intuitively comprehend player instructions, respond to gamers and perform more accurate and relevant actions.
The model is available as an NVIDIA NIM microservice, which provides a streamlined path for developing and deploying generative AI-powered applications. The NIM is optimized for low memory usage, offering faster response times and providing developers a way to take advantage of over 100 million GeForce RTX-powered PCs and laptops.
Nemotron-4 4B Instruct is part of NVIDIA ACE, a suite of digital human technologies that provide speech, intelligence and animation powered by generative AI. It’s available as a NIM for cloud and on-device deployment by game developers.
First Game Showcases ACE NIM Microservices
Mecha BREAK, developed by Amazing Seasun Games, a Kingsoft Corporation game subsidiary, is showcasing the NVIDIA Nemotron-4 4B Instruct NIM running on device in the first display of ACE-powered game interactions. The NVIDIA Audio2Face-3D NIM and Whisper, OpenAI’s automatic speech recognition model, provide facial animation and speech recognition running on-device. ElevenLabs powers the character’s voice through the cloud.
In this demo, shown first at Gamescom, one of the world’s biggest gaming expos, NVIDIA ACE and digital human technologies allow players to interact with a mechanic non-playable character (NPC) that can help them choose from a diverse range of mechanized robots, or mechs, to complement their playstyle or team needs, assist in appearance customization and give advice on how to best prepare their colossal war machine for battle.
“We’re excited to showcase the power and potential of ACE NIM microservices in Mecha BREAK, using Audio2Face and Nemotron-4 4B Instruct to dramatically enhance in-game immersion,” said Kris Kwok, CEO of Amazing Seasun Games.
Perfect World Games Explores Latest Digital Human Technologies
NVIDIA ACE and digital human technologies continue to expand their footprint in the gaming industry.
Global game publisher and developer Perfect World Games is advancing its NVIDIA ACE and digital human technology demo, Legends, with new AI-powered vision capabilities. Within the demo, the character Yun Ni can see gamers and identify people and objects in the real world using the computer’s camera powered by ChatGPT-4o, adding an augmented reality layer to the gameplay experience. These capabilities unlock a new level of immersion and accessibility for PC games.
Learn more about NVIDIA ACE and download the NIM to begin building game characters powered by generative AI.
Picture this: NVIDIA and MediaTek are working together to make the industry’s best gaming display technologies more accessible to gamers globally.
The companies’ collaboration, announced today at the Gamescom gaming gathering in Cologne, Germany, integrates the full suite of NVIDIA G-SYNC technologies into the world’s most popular scalers.
Gamers can expect superior image quality, unmatched motion clarity, ultra-low latency, highly accurate colors, and more cutting-edge benefits on their displays.
G-SYNC Pulsar: The Star of New Display Technologies
A highlight of this collaboration is the introduction of G-SYNC Pulsar, a new technology that offers 4x the effective motion clarity alongside a smooth and tear-free variable refresh rate (VRR) gaming experience.
G-SYNC Pulsar will debut on newly announced monitors, including the ASUS ROG Swift 360Hz PG27AQNR, Acer Predator XB273U F5 and AOC AGON PRO AG276QSG2.
These monitors, expected later this year, feature 2560×1440 resolution, a 360Hz refresh rate and HDR support.
Integrating G-SYNC into MediaTek scalers eliminates the need for a separate G-SYNC module, streamlining the production process and reducing costs.
This allows for the creation of feature-rich G-SYNC monitors at a more affordable price. And by expanding the availability of these premium gaming products to a broader audience, more gamers will be able to enjoy the best in motion clarity, image quality and performance.
As hurricanes, tornadoes and other extreme weather events occur with increased frequency and severity, it’s more important than ever to improve and accelerate climate research and prediction using the latest technologies.
Amid peaks in the current Atlantic hurricane season, NVIDIA Research today announced a new generative AI model, dubbed StormCast, for emulating high-fidelity atmospheric dynamics. This means the model can enable reliable weather prediction at mesoscale — a scale larger than storms but smaller than cyclones — which is critical for disaster planning and mitigation.
Detailed in a paper written in collaboration with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Washington, StormCast arrives as extreme weather phenomena are taking lives, destroying homes and causing more than $150 billion in damage annually in the U.S. alone.
It’s just one example of how generative AI is supercharging thundering breakthroughs in climate research and actionable extreme weather prediction, helping scientists tackle challenges of the highest stakes: saving lives and the world.
NVIDIA Earth-2 — a digital twin cloud platform that combines the power of AI, physical simulations and computer graphics — enables simulation and visualization of weather and climate predictions at a global scale with unprecedented accuracy and speed.
At COMPUTEX in June, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang announced CorrDiff, available through Earth-2.
In Taiwan, for example, the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction predicts fine-scale details of typhoons using CorrDiff, an NVIDIA generative AI model offered as part of Earth-2.
CorrDiff can super-resolve 25-kilometer-scale atmospheric data by 12.5x down to 2 kilometers — 1,000x faster and using 3,000x less energy for a single inference than traditional methods.
That means the center’s potentially lifesaving work, which previously cost nearly $3 million on CPUs, can be accomplished using about $60,000 on a single system with an NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPU. It’s a massive reduction that shows how generative AI and accelerated computing increase energy efficiency and lower costs.
The center also plans to use CorrDiff to predict downwash — when strong winds funnel down to street level, damaging buildings and affecting pedestrians — in urban areas.
Now, StormCast adds hourly autoregressive prediction capabilities to CorrDiff, meaning it can predict future outcomes based on past ones.
A Global Impact From a Regional Focus
Global climate research begins at a regional level.
Physical hazards of weather and climate change can vary dramatically on regional scales. But reliable numerical weather prediction at this level comes with substantial computational costs. This is due to the high spatial resolution needed to represent the underlying fluid-dynamic motions at mesoscale.
Regional weather prediction models — often referred to as convection-allowing models, or CAMs — have traditionally forced researchers to face varying tradeoffs in resolution, ensemble size and affordability.
CAMs are useful to meteorologists for tracking the evolution and structure of storms, as well as for monitoring its convective mode, or how a storm is organized when it forms. For example, the likelihood of a tornado is based on a storm’s structure and convective mode.
A mesoscale convective system visualized using NOAA’s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. Image courtesy of NOAA.
CAMs also help researchers understand the implications for weather-related physical hazards at the infrastructure level.
For example, global climate model simulations can be used to inform CAMs, helping them translate slow changes in the moisture content of large atmospheric rivers into flash-flooding projections in vulnerable coastal areas.
At lower resolutions, machine learning models trained on global data have emerged as useful emulators of numerical weather prediction models that can be used to improve early-warning systems for severe events. These machine learning models typically have a spatial resolution of about 30 kilometers and a temporal resolution of six hours.
Now, with the help of generative diffusion, StormCast enables this at a 3-kilometer, hourly scale.
Despite being in its infancy, the model — when applied with precipitation radars — already offers forecasts with lead times of up to six hours that are up to 10% more accurate than the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s state-of-the-art 3-kilometer operational CAM.
Plus, outputs from StormCast exhibit physically realistic heat and moisture dynamics, and can predict over 100 variables, such as temperature, moisture concentration, wind and rainfall radar reflectivity values at multiple, finely spaced altitudes. This enables scientists to confirm the realistic 3D evolution of a storm’s buoyancy — a first-of-its-kind accomplishment in AI weather simulation.
NVIDIA researchers trained StormCast on approximately three-and-a-half years of NOAA climate data from the central U.S., using NVIDIA accelerated computing to speed calculations.
More Innovations Brewing
Scientists are already looking to harness the model’s benefits.
“Given both the outsized impacts of organized thunderstorms and winter precipitation, and the major challenges in forecasting them with confidence, the production of computationally tractable storm-scale ensemble weather forecasts represents one of the grand challenges of numerical weather prediction,” said Tom Hamill, head of innovation at The Weather Company. “StormCast is a notable model that addresses these challenges, and The Weather Company is excited to collaborate with NVIDIA on developing, evaluating and potentially using these deep learning forecast models.”
“Developing high-resolution weather models requires AI algorithms to resolve convection, which is a huge challenge,” said Imme Ebert-Uphoff, machine learning lead at Colorado State University’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere. “The new NVIDIA research explores the potential of accomplishing this with diffusion models like StormCast, which presents a significant step toward the development of future AI models for high-resolution weather prediction.”
Alongside the acceleration and visualization of physically accurate climate simulations, as well as a digital twin of our planet, such research breakthroughs signify how NVIDIA Earth-2 is enabling a new, vital era of climate research.
Learn more about sustainable computing and NVIDIA Research, a global team of hundreds of scientists and engineers focused on topics including climate AI, computer graphics, computer vision, self-driving cars and robotics.
Featured image courtesy of NASA.
See notice regarding software product information.
Time to be wowed: GeForce NOW members can now stream World of Warcraft on supported devices with in-game mods powered by the CurseForge platform for WoW customization. With support for top mods, even the most hardcore raid leaders can play like a hero, thanks to the cloud.
Embark on a new adventure in Azeroth when the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within, launches on Monday, Aug. 26, at 3 p.m. PT. GeForce NOW members who purchase the Epic Edition of The War Within will get early streaming access on Thursday, Aug. 22, at 3 p.m. PT.
And check out the five new games available in the ever-expanding GeForce NOW library this week, including the Psychonauts series from Double Fine Productions.
For those looking to upgrade their play or try out GeForce NOW for the first time, the Summer Sale is offering new one- and six-month Ultimate and Priority memberships at 50% off through this Sunday, Aug. 18.
Play Your Way
Return to World of Warcraft in style across supported devices with GeForce NOW and support for top CurseForge Addons. One of the most popular platforms for WoW Addons, CurseForge includes user interface customization, combat Addons, action bars, quest helpers and many more categories.
GeForce NOW has collaborated with CurseForge to include over 25 of the top Addons from its platform, available to Ultimate and Priority members — including Day Pass users — to seamlessly customize their WoW experience. The Addons are just as easy to implement as they would be while playing locally on a PC gaming rig, and a CurseForge account isn’t required — just launch WoW and enable Addons from the game’s menu.
Customize and conquer.
After clicking the new “Addons” button from the in-game menu, paying GeForce NOW members can choose the Addons they’d like to enable or opt to enable all. After that, CurseForge will ensure Addons update automatically, and GeForce NOW will remember the Addons selected on each game launch. Check out this article for more details.
Stream World of Warcraft and any mods that normally only work on PC across devices that the game is supported on, including SHIELD TVs, underpowered laptops, Chromebooks and handheld devices like the Steam Deck. Addons will work across all supported WoW experiences on GeForce NOW, including Classic and Cataclysm Classic. From ancient wonders to perilous dungeons, GeForce NOW is the best way for game veterans and newcomers alike to experience unparalleled adventure in the heart of Azeroth.
Members can show off their World of Warcraft Addons in the cloud by sharing a screenshot on social media using #ModsonGFN for a chance to be featured on GeForce NOW’s channels.
Dive to New Depths
Get ready to embark on a journey to the heart of Azeroth in The War Within and unveil the mysteries lying beneath the world’s surface, with early streaming access for those who purchase the Epic Edition. GeForce NOW members will be able to jump right in without waiting around for game updates.
Dig deep.
Experience the thrill of Warbands and an account-wide progression system, and soar through the skies with the new Skyriding feature. Dive into the Radiant Echoes event, collect Residual Memories and gear up with new items for Warband collections. With class and system updates, this expansion sets the stage for the epic tales and battles that await in the depths of Azeroth. Answer the call to arms when the saga of The War Within begins.
The full update for The War Within promises to delve deeper into the unexplored depths of Azeroth, continuing the story and expanding the gameplay experience. Look forward to new zones, dungeons and raids, as well as class and system updates — all at high performance, streaming on GeForce NOW.
Mind Over Matter
The mind is a dangerous place.
The Psychonauts franchise is the beloved action-adventure platformer from Double Fine Productions. Follow the story of Razputin “Raz” Aquato, a young psychic who runs away from the circus to join a summer camp for psychic spies-in-training. Experience unique level design and explore the minds of various characters, each filled with imaginative and often bizarre landscapes that reflect their psychological states.
Brains over brawn.
In Psychonauts 2, Raz is a full-fledged Psychonaut embarking on his first official mission. The sequel delves deeper into Raz’s family background and the workings of the Psychonauts organization. Explore intricately designed mental worlds, all while engaging in platforming and puzzle-solving gameplay.
With a GeForce NOW Ultimate or Priority account, the mind-bending world of Psychonauts is just a click away. Dive in, explore the depths of the human psyche and uncover the secrets that lie within.
Get With the Newness
The hunt is on.
Hunt: Showdown 1896 from Crytek marks a new era for the high-stakes, tactical first-person extraction game. The new PC update, available for members today, moves from the original game’s swamps of Louisiana to the sprawling mountains of Colorado. The brand-new Mammon’s Gulch map brings mountains, stunning vistas and grueling mines to the gaming experience, providing all-new elevation points and strategic angles for players to hide out and take out enemy Hunters.
In addition, members can look for the following:
Level Zero: Extraction (New release on Steam, Aug. 13)
Editor’s note: This post is part of the AI Decoded series, which demystifies AI by making the technology more accessible, and showcases new hardware, software, tools and accelerations for RTX PC users.
Content generators — whether producing language, 2D images, 3D models or videos — are giving the creative community tools that bring visions to life faster.
To help developers build these new generative AI tools, NVIDIA has set up NVIDIA AI Foundry. It helps companies train generative AI models on their own licensed data using NVIDIA Edify, a multimodal AI architecture that can use simple text prompts to generate images, videos, 3D assets, 360-degree high-dynamic-range imaging and physically based rendering (PBR) materials. Using AI Foundry, companies can train bespoke AI models to generate any of these assets.
Key elements of Edify include its ability to generate multiple types of content, its superior training efficiency, which allows it to produce high-quality content while trained on fewer images, and its ability to fine-tune models to style-match or learn characters or objects.
One of the best examples of services built on NVIDIA AI Foundry and Edify is Generative AI by Getty Images, a commercially safe generative photography service. The combination of AI Foundry and Edify allows users to control their training datasets, so they can create models that fit their need.
To avoid copyright issues, Getty Images used Edify to train the service on its own licensed content, ensuring that no famous characters or products are in the dataset. The company also shares part of the profits with the contributors, driving a new revenue stream for creators who contribute to the model.
Asset Generation With Edify
Edify can be trained to generate a variety of image types, including images, 3D assets and 360-degree HDRi environment maps.
Edify Image can generate four high-quality 1K images in around six seconds, doubling the performance of the previous model. Images can also be converted to 4K with a generative upscaler that adds additional details.
Getty Images 4K image generation trained on NVIDIA Edify using commercially safe creative libraries.
Images are highly controllable thanks to advanced prompt adherence, camera controls to specify focal length or depth of field, and ControlNets to guide the generation. The ControlNets include Sketch, which allows users to provide a sketch to follow or copy the composition of an image, and Depth, to copy the composition of an image.
Images can also be edited with Edify Image. InPaint allows users to add or modify content in an image. Replace — a strict InPaint — can change details such as clothing. And OutPaint can expand an image to match different aspect ratios. And all of this is simplified with Segment, a feature that can mask objects with just a text prompt.
Edify can also create artist-ready 3D meshes. The meshes come with clean quads-based topology, up to 4K PBR materials and automatic UV mapping for easier texture editing. A fast preview mode provides results in as few as 10 seconds, which can then be turned into a full 3D mesh.
Meshes are perfect for prototyping scenes, generating background objects for set decoration or as a head start for 3D sculpting.
Edify 360 HDRi generates environment maps of natural landscapes that can be used to light a scene, for reflections and even as a background. The model can generate up to 16K HDRi images from text or image prompts. With a desired backplate in hand, users can create a custom HDRi to match instead of spending hours looking for one.
High dynamic range, 360-degree panoramas from text prompts.
Edify’s multimodal capability is unique, enabling advanced workflows that combine different asset types. Used together with an agent, for instance, Edify allows users to prototype a full scene in a couple of minutes with a simple text prompt — like in the NVIDIA Research SIGGRAPH demo that showcased the assistive 3D world-building capabilities of NVIDIA Edify-powered models and the NVIDIA Omniverse platform.
Another use case is to combine Edify 3D and 360 HDRi with Image to give users full control of image generation. By generating the scene in 3D, artists can move objects around and frame their desired shot — and then use Edify Image to turn the prototype into a photorealistic image.
Generative AI by Getty Images
Getty Images is one of the largest content service providers and suppliers of creative visuals, editorial photography, video and music — and is the one of the first places people turn to discover, purchase and share powerful visual content from the world’s best photographers and videographers.
Getty Images used NVIDIA AI Foundry to train an NVIDIA Edify Image model to power its generative AI service. Available through Generative AI by Getty Images for enterprises and Generative AI by iStock for small businesses and amateur creators, the service allows users to generate and modify images using models powered by NVIDIA Edify.
Generative AI by Getty Images (or iStock) offers a variety of licensed content.
Getty Images and iStock recently updated to the latest version of Edify Image, enabling faster generations and higher prompt adherence and exposing Camera Controls.
Updated camera controls in Generative AI by Getty Images.
Users can now also use the generative AI tools on preshot creative content, allowing them to edit and modify iStock’s library of visuals to rapidly iterate and perfect content. Those same capabilities will be soon available on Gettyimages.com.
Test drive Generative AI by Getty Images on ai.nvidia.com.
Generative AI is transforming gaming, videoconferencing and interactive experiences of all kinds. Make sense of what’s new and what’s next by subscribing to the AI Decoded newsletter.
Bringing together the world’s brightest minds and the latest accelerated computing technology leads to powerful breakthroughs that help tackle some of the biggest research problems.
To foster such innovation, the NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship Program provides grants, mentors and technical support to doctoral students doing outstanding research relevant to NVIDIA technologies. The program, in its 24th year running, is now accepting applications worldwide.
It focuses on supporting students working in AI, machine learning, autonomous vehicles, computer graphics, robotics, healthcare, high-performance computing and related fields. Awards are up to $60,000 per student.
Since its start in 2002, the Graduate Fellowship Program has awarded 200 grants worth more than $6.5 million.
Students must have completed at least their first year of Ph.D.-level studies at the time of application.
The application deadline for the 2025-2026 academic year is Friday, Sept. 13, 2024. An in-person internship at an NVIDIA research office preceding the fellowship year is mandatory; eligible candidates must be available for the internship in summer 2025.
For more on eligibility and how to apply, visit the program website.
The State of California today announced a first-of-its-kind AI education initiative with NVIDIA.
The public-private collaboration supports the state’s goals in workforce training and economic development by giving universities, community colleges and adult education programs in California the resources to gain skills in generative AI.
“AI will continue to become more advanced and more prominent in all sectors, and California has the responsibility to support and prepare our students and faculties,” said Amy Tong, secretary of the California Government Operations Agency. “As a world leader in AI computing, NVIDIA is a natural partner to prepare the future of California’s workforce.”
“It’s always good to equip our professors and teachers because, as mentors to our youth, they are in the best position to help shape students’ career paths,” Tong said.
By empowering educators across the state with the skills to harness the latest AI technologies and NVIDIA GPUs, the initiative can prepare full-time students about to enter the workforce and it can train working professionals who are expanding their skills through community college or adult education courses.
“We want to train a workforce of the future, and also excite students and adults who are out of the workforce about opportunities for the future,” said Stewart Knox, secretary of the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency.
The state agencies are also exploring how internship and apprenticeship programs can offer students hands-on experience with AI skills.
Bolstering Efforts to Bridge the Digital Divide
NVIDIA is already working on multiple projects across California to make AI more accessible and understandable for students from a variety of backgrounds. The company’s educational initiatives and industry-spanning collaborations are helping students and professionals in biotechnology and life sciences, advanced manufacturing, media and entertainment, and other fields to gain proficiency in harnessing AI to support their work, enhance their productivity and drive innovation.
San José State University is evaluating how the NVIDIA Omniverse development platform could support the creation of digital twins — 3D virtual representations of real-world systems — for the city of San José. During the university’s annual Black Engineer Week in June, NVIDIA hosted dozens of students for a daylong program featuring tech demos and career advice discussions.
NVIDIA is embarking on several workforce, climate and community-based projects with schools in the University of California and California State University systems. One plans to train students on underwater data center technology, while another is working with California Black Media to train a large language model on nearly a century of journalism by Black journalists in the state.
The NVIDIA GTC AI conference, held earlier this year in San José, featured several sessions for educators to explore how to integrate generative AI and NVIDIA technologies into their curricula — as well as a panel discussion about the need for equitable access to AI education and resources.
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